A veneer of green acceptability
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday August 1, 2009
OF THE major green groups, the two that accept money from business supporters are the same two that controversially endorsed the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme revisions in May.Coincidence? Maybe not.In 2007-08, WWF took 9 per cent of its $20.7 million in revenue €“ or $1.9 million €“ from businesses. Top donors included AGL, ANZ, Telstra, Country Energy and the forestry company Integrated Tree Cropping.The Australian Conservation Foundation got 3 per cent of its $13.1 million in revenue €“ about $390,000 €“ from business supporters including NAB, Origin Energy, Pratt Industries, Virgin Blue and Westpac.Greenpeace ($20.1 million revenue in calendar 2008) and the Wilderness Society ($14.5 million) do not accept money from corporates.Friends of the Earth has a looser branch structure and smaller revenue base. National revenues were just $422,000 in 2007-08. The FoE campaigner Cam Walker explains the organisation has a "red" list of companies it would never take money from €“ for example, those involved in fossil fuels or destruction of old-growth forests. Its "yellow" list companies are evaluated on a case-by-case basis and the "green" list of acceptable companies includes the likes of The Body Shop.Occasionally €śwe'll collaborate with a company', says Walker. Last year, for example, FoE took about $40,000 from a small ecotourist outfit, Intrepid Travel, to part-fund its €śStop the Melt€ť campaign involving a trek in the Himalayas.Walker cites WWF for giving its business partners a veneer of environmental acceptability €“ often just when they are under pressure from other green groups. €śParticularly with WWF, it's not really discernible where the corporations end and the organisation starts." In Walker's view, they sell out the movement.€śThey took money from Rio Tinto for Frogwatch all during the Jabiluka years.€ťWWF's partners offshore have included the quarrying giant Lafarge and loggers such as Boise Cascade and Timberland.Bob Burton, author of Inside Spin, says environment groups should not take money from business at all. €śSponsorship deals change the thinking on who the environment group should be talking to.€ť€śThey talk about it as good cop-bad cop, but I think it's a false analogy. Their role is to be independent and judge companies on their merits, not to take money from them.€ťAs well as being distracting, Burton says, corporate sponsorship is often fickle and green groups can be vulnerable to a change in strategy or management.He also thinks corporations have less respect for non-government organisations that partner them, and blur the lines over funding. The green groups, he says, €śtend to think of it as true love ... but for the company it's like hiring a prostitute".WWF's chief executive, Greg Bourne, a former regional president of BP, disagrees. Having worked on both sides of the fence, he says business ignores green groups that harp only on the negatives.WWF was founded in the early 1960s to work with government and business to find solutions to environmental issues, he says, and it has stuck to its roots and charter. WWF has a sponsorship protocol (which is not available online) and does €śdeep€ť due diligence on potential partners. €śThe key thing is, can people pull you off your strategy and your values?€ť he asks. €śAbsolutely not.€ťBourne says it is naive to expect all green groups to be the same. Where would he draw the line? He is highly critical of what he calls an €śextremely destructive lobbying effort€ť by business interests that would like to see absolutely nothing happen on climate change, including Xstrata, Woodside, Bluescope Steel and the Minerals Council of Australia. €śHow they can sleep in their beds I have no idea.€ťBut Bourne has no regrets about supporting the revised carbon pollution reduction scheme in May. A strong backer of carbon capture and storage, he is a member of the carbon sequestration taskforce, reporting to the Clean Coal Council of the Energy and Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson. He bristles at the idea WWF is rewarded for a softer stance, with appointments to such bodies. But good access is definitely part of the strategy. "If you don't have access to governments and business, you're on the outer. You've got to be on the pitch to play.€ťBourne €“ probably the environment leader best plugged into the business community €“ doesn't call himself a greenie at all, because of the negative connotations. €śPut simply, I could never have worked for Greenpeace,€ť he says.Somewhere between WWF and Greenpeace are the likes of the Climate Institute €“ funded by a $10 million grant from Mark Wootton's Poola Foundation, derived from the Murdoch fortune €“ and the ACF, both of which supported the May revisions to the carbon pollution reduction scheme.The ACF won plaudits for its corporate engagement in 2006 €“ under a hostile Howard government €“ when it launched its Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change with support from BP, IAG, Origin, Swiss Re, Visy and Westpac.It also has taken the fight to business €“ recently complaining to the competition regulator over alleged misleading and deceptive conduct by six major polluters who were making exaggerated claims about the potential financial implications of the emissions trading scheme.But the foundation's executive director, Don Henry, was heavily criticised by supporters over his support for the carbon pollution reduction scheme.One vocal critic was Mark Diesendorf, deputy director of the Institute of Environment Studies at the University of NSW and a former co-ordinator of the ACF's climate change campaign. The ACF, he says, was €śconned by [the Environment Minister] Penny Wong€ť over its support for the scheme.Within the environment movement, he says, €śthe vast majority now recognise it should be called the carbon pollution reinforcement scheme. Its main effect will be to lock in the big greenhouse polluters and actually in some cases expand their operations. This is why there was such strong concern about apparent endorsement by WWF, ACF and Climate Institute.€ťDiesendorf threatened at the time not to renew his ACF membership €“ but he strongly supports other ACF campaigns. He does not believe the ACF and the Australian environment movement broadly have failed or been co-opted by business €“ this has been more of an issue in the US.€śThere are one or two groups that the majority of environment groups would look at suspiciously and worry about and WWF would be one of those. There is concern that WWF could be talked into such support.€ťCam Walker says the May endorsement of the revised carbon pollution reduction scheme by WWF, ACF and the Climate Institute was €śthe last straw for a lot of people ... The gloves are off now. People have let go of solidarity to a degree.€ť
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald